24 February 2025 (Dallas, TX)
- Katherine Crassons, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh
University, is the recipient of the 2025 Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship. One
of the most prestigious grants for medievalists, the “Wheeler” aims to
cultivate women as academic leaders.
Established to honor esteemed medievalist Bonnie Wheeler, the
Fellowship Fund was directed at her request to support the research of
tenured women medievalists “stuck” below the rank of full professor. In
addition to a generous stipend, each recipient is paired with a
distinguished mentor in the field who engages with the recipient and her
project to its successful completion. The fellowship helps women who
have been at the associate level for too long to get “unstuck” and move
to full professor.
Professor Crassons will receive the $25,000 fellowship and the
support of a mentor as she completes her research for her book, Signs of
Wonder: Faith, Ethics, and Epistemology in Medieval and Early Modern
England, in which she explores the contradictions and complexities
inherent in concepts of miracles and belief in poetry, drama, and prose
written before and after the Reformation. Signs of Wonder looks at how
medieval people reacted to biblically-based miracle stories and to other
representations of the supernatural in the religious environment of
their day. In an era when texts routinely describe saints boiled in
cauldrons of oil who feel no pain, visionary women who can predict the
future, and eucharistic hosts that suddenly display Christ’s living
body, this book asks a series of key questions: What did premodern
people think about such incredible representations and events? What
insights do texts reveal about their experience of faith in ideas and
occurrences that often seem strange to us today? How did the faithful
reckon with phenomena that perhaps tested the limits of believability
even in their own era?
Chair of the Selection Committee, Professor Anne Yardley, Drew
Theological School (retired) noted that the committee found the project
compelling and expressed enthusiasm for Crassons’ application, “In
Professor Crassons we see a hard-working and productive scholar with a
great and doable project. We believe that a "Wheeler" will give her the
support she needs to finish her book and attain the rank of full
professor." Several members of the Selection Committee commented on
Crassons’ steady record of publication and superlative teaching
evaluations--to which she somehow ('miraculously,' we felt) adds yet
another demanding responsibility, serving as the director of the
university's press.
Hailing from New Orleans, Crassons earned a BA in English and Spanish
from Louisiana State University, the MA from the University of
Colorado-Boulder, and the PhD in English from Duke University before
joining Lehigh University in 2004. She has been the Director of Lehigh
University Press since 2014. Her research focuses on late medieval
literature and culture with particular emphasis on religion. She has
also written extensively on disability studies, often making connections
between medieval and modern society and addressing such topics as
poverty, Christian subjectivity, and neurodiversity.